Project 4: Roller Coaster

3/25/2020

The initial inspiration for my roller coaster was the Fiery Fist O'Pain from the Spongebob episode "Roller Cowards."

I didn't end up making a roller coaster identical to or even resembling the Fiery Fist O'Pain, but I did make a spiraling roller coaster of an absurd height, with 3 peaks like the Fiery Fist O'Pain. The tallest peak is so tall that showing the entirety of it makes the 2 smaller peaks hard to see.

This was my storyboard for the animation:

Here is my final animation:

I modeled everything myself, except the trees, which I got from here.

Principles of Animation

1. Slow In & Slow Out

The roller coaster starts slow and gains speed as it moves along the track, then once it stops again at the top of a peak, it also slows to a stop. This makes the roller coaster's motions more realistic and was achieved through editing the U value for the camera attached to the motion path in the graph editor.

The U value is kind of like a percentage for how far along a motion path an object has traveled, so the graph's y-axis range is from 0 to 1. Points where the graph is completely horizontal are when the U value is not changing, or when the object is not moving. The beginning of the graph, when the coaster starts, is a curve that gradually increases from zero to a constant slope for a few frames, indicating the coaster gradually accelerating (slow in). Similarly, at the end of each horizontal area there are curves easing the tangent from 0 to a larger slope once the coaster starts again, indicating a gradual acceleration (also slow in). Before every horizontal area in the motion path, there are curves that ease the tangent of the graph into 0 slope entering the horizontal area, indicating gradual deceleration (slow out).

2. Anticipation

Before every large drop, the roller coaster stops for a second for the rider to look down and anticipate the drop to come. The largest drop also has a lengthy ascent time ending in a stop with the camera panning to the ground below, which also anticipates the drop.

3. Exaggeration

The absurd height of the peak is further exaggerated with the camera that pans from the rest of the roller coaster to the top of the peak in the beginning of the animation.